Emergency services and rescue services are organizations that ensure public safety and health by addressing different emergencies that arise. Some of these agencies exist solely for addressing certain types of emergencies while others deal with ad hoc emergencies as part of their normal responsibilities. Many of these agencies engage in community awareness and prevention programs to help the public avoid, detect, and report emergencies effectively. The availability of emergency services depends very heavily on location, and may in some cases also rely on the recipient receiving the service.
There are three main emergency service functions: (1) the police, which provide community safety and law enforcement to reduce crime against persons and property; (2) the fire department (fire and rescue services), which provide firefighters to deal with fire and rescue operations as well as some secondary emergency service duties; (3) the emergency medical service (EMS), which provides ambulances and staff to deal with medical emergencies. In some countries these three functions are performed by three separate organizations. However, there are also many countries where fire, rescue and ambulance services are all performed by a single organization.
Emergency services typically have one or more dedicated emergency telephone numbers reserved for critical emergency calls. In some countries, one number is used for all the emergency services. In some countries, each emergency service has its own emergency number. Throughout the United States 911 is used as the telephone number for emergency services.
The goal of most emergency medical services is to either provide treatment to those in need of urgent medical care, with the goal of satisfactorily treating the presented conditions, and arranging for timely removal of the patient to the next point of definitive care. This is most likely an emergency department at a hospital. The term emergency medical service has evolved to reflect a change from a simple system of ambulances providing only transportation, to a system in which actual medical care is given on scene and during transport.
In most places in the world, the EMS is summoned by members of the public (or other emergency services, businesses, or authorities) via an emergency telephone number which puts them in contact with a control facility, which will then dispatch a suitable resource to deal with the situation.
In some jurisdictions, EMS units may handle technical rescue operations such as extrication, water rescue, and search and rescue. Training and qualification levels for members and employees of emergency medical services vary widely throughout the world. In some systems, some members of an EMS team may only qualify to drive the ambulance because they have no medical training. In contrast, most systems have personnel who retain at least basic first aid certifications. Additionally many EMS systems are staffed with advanced life support personnel, including paramedics, or nurses.
Emergency medical services exist to fulfill the basic principles of first aid, which are to preserve life, prevent further injury, and promote recovery. The six stages of high quality pre-hospital care include: (1) Early detection-members of the public, or another agency, find the incident and understand the problem; (2) Early reporting—the first persons on scene make a call to the emergency medical services and provide details to enable a response to be mounted; (3) Early response—the first professional (EMS) rescuers arrive on scene as quickly as possible, enabling care to begin; (4) Good on-scene care—the emergency medical service provides appropriate and timely interventions to treat the patient at the scene of the incident; (5) Care in transit—the emergency medical service load the patient in to suitable transport and continue to provide appropriate medical care throughout the journey; (6) Transfer to definitive care—the patient is handed over to an appropriate care setting, such as the emergency department at a hospital.
A first responder is a person who arrives first at the scene of an emergency, whose job is to respond to the immediate risk to health, life, property, or environment. First responders may be dispatched by the ambulance service, may be passers-by, citizen volunteers, or members of other agencies such as the police, fire department, or search and rescue who have some medical training.
Typically at the beginning of an emergency situation either the person who is injured, in a fire, or a victim to a crime reports the dangerous/emergency incident by calling 911. Once the victim, other individual, or automated system contacts 911, the 911 dispatcher obtains information from the victim including the type of emergency situation, the number of people involved in the emergency situation and the location of the emergency situation. The purpose of acquiring this type of information is for the proper emergency services to be procured as well as to provide information for the emergency responders that arrive on scene. The information provides the first responders with advanced information regarding the emergency and how to correctly respond.
However, the amount of information that can be provided by the individual who calls emergency services is limited to the knowledge of the caller and the know-how of the emergency responders that arrive on scene.